Cinecon 2007
Cinecon, the Labor Day weekend festival of rare (mostly American) films, will take place between Aug. 30-Sept. 3, 2007, at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. In addition to hard-to-find movies, Cinecon also features special guests, a small book fair, discussion panels, and several dealers’ rooms.
Among the highlights — "pending final clearance" and "subject to change" — at Cinecon 43 are:
The recently discovered Her Wild Oat, a 1927 comedy starring Colleen Moore, one of the most popular film stars of the 1920s. Her Wild Oat is certainly not the greatest film — or the funniest comedy — ever made, but Moore is a delight in her usual role as the working-class girl who finds herself a prince charming with loads of cash. Also in the cast, Hallam Cooley, Larry Kent, and Gwen Lee — plus future Oscar winner Loretta Young in a bit part. (Young can be found in the ping-pong sequence.) Marshall Neilan directed.
The recently restored (by UCLA) Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914), reportedly the first feature-length slapstick comedy ever made, stars Charles Chaplin, Mabel Normand, and future Oscar winner and box-office sensation Marie Dressler. I’m not a Chaplin fan — in truth, I’m no fan of most "official" film comedians — but I’ve always enjoyed both Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler. Once again, not the funniest movie ever made, but a must for anyone interested in film history. Directed by Mack Sennett. (Addendum: Tillie’s Punctured Romance was pulled out of the schedule. It may be screened next year.)
(By "official" I mean people like Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Harold Lloyd, W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Jerry Lewis, Jim Carrey, etc., all of whom tend to put me to sleep. Generally speaking, I much prefer performers who, though not "comedians" per se, could be uproariously funny in comic roles; people like Irene Dunne, Jean Arthur, Cary Grant, Ann Sheridan, Gary Cooper, William Powell, Carole Lombard, Marilyn Monroe, Edna May Oliver, et al. Hey, I couldn’t not include Edna May Oliver in the latter list.)
In the 1935 sophisticated comedy The Gilded Lily (above), Claudette Colbert co-stars with frequent partner Fred MacMurray and a very young Ray Milland. In the film, Colbert plays a stenographer-turned-famous entertainer who must choose between two men. Why on Earth she’d even consider choosing between the usually charming Milland and the usually dull MacMurray is beyond me, but the little-seen The Gilded Lily does have a pretty solid reputation. Wesley Ruggles directed.
Only Yesterday is a 1933 romantic drama starring Margaret Sullavan and John Boles. Though officially based on Frederick Lewis Allen’s novel, the film owes a lot to Stefan Zweig’s Letter from an Unknown Woman. (Max Ophüls‘ 1948 adaptation starring Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan remains one of the greatest romantic movies ever.) John M. Stahl directed.
Tom Mix’s second talkie, the 1932 Western Rider of Death Valley (left), pairs the cowboy star with popular silent-film player Lois Wilson. Directed by Al Rogell. Cinecon will screen a new 35mm print.
A major rarity is the roadshow (i.e., complete) version of The Patent Leather Kid (top photo, 1927), directed by Alfred Santell, and starring Academy Award nominee Richard Barthelmess as an arrogant, selfish, petulant boxer — the PLK of the title — who, thanks to World War I and a round-faced girlfriend (Molly O’Day), learns all about love, duty, patriotism, and — best of all — God’s Greatness.
Adela Rogers St. Johns was credited for the screenplay, and I can easily see the worldly St. Johns peeing in her panties — from laughing — while writing the hokey characters and situations. Audiences gobbled it all up — much as they still do today. (Note: In the first year of the Academy Awards, Barthelmess was also nominated for The Noose. He lost to Emil Jannings, also for two movies: The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command.)
Interference (1928) was Paramount’s first all-talking picture. Directed by J. Roy Pomeroy and Lothar Mendes, this crime melodrama stars Clive Brook, Evelyn Brent, Doris Kenyon, and William Powell. I haven’t seen Interference, but film historian Anthony Slide told me that it feels surprisingly modern.
Man, Woman and Wife (right) is an ultra-rare 1929 Universal drama. (Universal, ever concerned with the preservation of the arts and culture, junked most of its silents in the late 1940s.) The film stars Norman Kerry, Pauline Starke, Marion Nixon, and Kenneth Harlan, and is described as "part social drama, gangster picture, war story and prison drama all rolled up in one, with solid performances, beautiful photography by Ben Reynolds, ASC, and top-notch direction by Edward Laemmle."
Also at Cinecon 43: The Showdown (1928), directed by Victor Schertzinger, and starring Evelyn Brent, George Bancroft, and Neil Hamilton; Girls Can Play (1937) — baseball, that is — with Jacqueline Wells (later rebaptized as Julie Bishop), and a very young Rita Hayworth; and the Jo Swerling-Norman Krasna-scripted Hollywood Speaks (1932), starring Pat O’Brien and the underrated Genevieve Tobin (as "Gertie Smith aka Greta Swan").
Plus, the screwball comedy Cafe Metropole (1937), with Loretta Young, Tyrone Power, and the invariably dreary Adolphe Menjou, Branding Broadway (1918), a comic fish-out-of-water tale starring granite-faced cowboy William S. Hart lost in New York City; the B-mystery A Man Betrayed (1941), starring John Wayne and Frances Dee; and the Alice Faye musical Wake Up and Live (1937).
(Correction: I’d initially written that Wake Up and Live "doesn’t offer the most melodious of scores or the wittiest of screenplays, but Faye is always worth a look." In truth, I had that 1937 Faye vehicle confused with another 1937 Faye vehicle, You Can’t Have Everything. I’ve never seen Wake Up and Live. My apologies.)
And finally, the comic Western Trail of the Vigilantes (1940), which boasts an eclectic and unlikely cast (for a Western) that includes urban animals Franchot Tone, Broderick Crawford, and Warren William; Henry King’s The Devil’s Bait (left, 1915), starring serial superstar Ruth Roland and William Conklin; and How’s About it? (1943), a B-musical with the Andrews Sisters.
I couldn’t find a list of celebrities expected to attend this year’s Cinecon, but last year they had Coleen Gray, Tab Hunter, Delbert Mann, Marsha Hunt, Stella Stevens, Ann Savage, and about a dozen others.
Whether or not I — or anyone else, for that matter — like the films screened at Cinecon is all but irrelevant. What truly matters is that there are a group of people who are willing to spend time and effort to make these rarities available — virtual trips to worlds that no longer exist — even if only for one weekend a year in Hollywood.
And where else will you find (1930s child star) Sybil Jason autographing books?
More information at the Cinecon website.
UCLA’s 13th Festival of Preservation Comes to a Close
Barbara Payton: Q&A with Biographer John O’Dowd
Michelangelo Antonioni at LACMA
Hedy Lamarr: Q&A with Biographer Patrick Agan
Joan Crawford Q&A with Neil Maciejewski
Nordesterns – Damned Brazilian Westerns!
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Tags: Classic Movies, Film Festivals, Los Angeles Screenings, Silent Films
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